CARTA Consortium

About CARTA

The consortium for Causal Analysis Research in Tobacco and Alcohol (CARTA) was established to investigate the causal effects of tobacco, alcohol and other lifestyle factors on health and sociodemographic outcomes using Mendelian randomisation methods.

In Mendelian randomisation studies, genetic variants which are associated with the exposure of interest are used as proxies for the measured exposures. The associations of these genetic variants with outcomes should be less subject to confounding than conventional observational associations and will not be affected by reverse causality.

The initial set of CARTA analyses are investigating the causal effects of smoking using a genetic variant located in theCHRNA5-CHRNA3-CHRNB4nicotinic acetylcholine receptor gene cluster (single nucleotide polymorphism numbers: rs1051730/rs16969968).This variant is robustly associated with smoking heaviness in smokers.